The Objections to Election - Jude 1

JD02-01

In Ephesians 1:3-14, we read about the doctrine of election. One of the main features pointed out there in verse 4 is that it was pre-temporal. It was before the creation of the world. Election was a set issue before there was anybody or anything on the scene. In Romans 9:6-29, that we looked at in some detail, we see that this passage plainly teaches that some are preferred over others. God chooses some to eternal life. He does not choose others. In Romans 8:28-30, we read about God's plan for the elect, and we see that all things work together for good to these who are the elect. And please, dear Christians, if you have some saved friends or some unbelievers who are having troubles in their lives, please don't go up to them and quote Romans 8:28 because it doesn't apply to them. But to those who are in the family of God, all things do work together for good. This plan starts with foreknowledge, and then it goes step-by-step-by-step in those verses all the way to glorification--a resurrected body and a being which is transformed into the image of Christ.

In 2 Thessalonians 2:13-14, we have the expression "chosen you to salvation." In John 17:9, we read about the Father who has given the Son His elect ones. In John 10:26-29, we find that people do not believe because they are not part of the Lord's fold. They do not believe because they are not of His sheep. And those who do not believe, perish.

We found that election is grounded in God and not in man. The Word of God tells us that election is based not on human will or on human rights (John 1:13, 2 Timothy 1:9). God saves us because He calls us apart from our own wills and apart from any of our own works. Because of this, the purpose of God and His grace is the thing that has decided our election, and this was done before creation. Ephesians 1:5, 11 says that our election is grounded in the good pleasure of God. Election is grounded in foreknowledge of what God would do, not in foreknowledge of what man will do. Remember that the word foreknowledge indicates the nature of the relationship--an intimacy of relationship--and implies a personal choice. God has brought you and me by His personal choice into an intimate relationship with Himself.

Romans 8:29 says that God foreknew whom (not what) we would do. "Whom He foreknew, them He justified." It wasn't on what you did in the future, that God could see you would do, and then He decided, "Okay, you're elect." It is simply a sovereign God picking people on the basis of His personal decisions. Foreknowledge is in effect synonymous with foreordination and predestination. There is no text in the Bible that ever says that God chose us because we would believe, or because He knew we would, and so He based His election on that. Election is not based on what God knew that we would do in the future. Election is pre-temporal, before we (or any creation) was on the scene, and it was on the basis of the sovereign will and good pleasure of God, stemming from His love and expressed in His grace. So election doesn't begin simply at the moment you decide to believe. It began before you were ever on the scene. So all human merit is ruled out in salvation, including this beginning of salvation in the area of election.

Concerning the purpose of election, it has a near goal, and that purpose is salvation. It has an intermediate goal, and that's a holy life right now in time. And it has an ultimate goal which is the glory of God.

Now the reason we have problems with the doctrine of election is because all of us have an old sin nature. This old sin nature is in various stages of disorientation, and of resistance, consequently, to the Word of God. Man's viewpoint has been distorted from truth because of the fall. As a result of what happened in the Garden of Eden, our minds are darkened. And as you come to the doctrine of election, you have to remind yourself that you have a mind which is distorted from the mind of God.

That problem has been corrected in you to the extent that you have absorbed Bible doctrine; taken into your being the mind of God; corrected the concepts and the direction of your thinking; and, phased them into God's thinking. Apart from God the Holy Spirit, the natural man cannot reason correctly. So when we come to the doctrine of election, your reaction toward this will reflect the status of the control element of the old sin nature in your being relative to the control by God the Holy Spirit. Conversion begins the process of correcting this. We call this sanctification. This doctrine begins to reverse the effects that the fall has had on our minds. The Holy Spirit brings our deranged thinking back to divine viewpoint.

Man's resistance to election is not because God is off or illogical. Our resistance to the doctrine of election is because we are off, and because we are illogical. When you get coordinated with God's point of view, these things begin increasingly to fall in place and make considerable sense. Election is illogical to the old sin nature. So it is natural for us to object. So there are certain objections we're going to look at.

Consistency with Human Freedom and Responsibility

1. Free Agency

   To begin with, a very great objection to election is that election is not consistent with human freedom and responsibility. Romans 9:19 actually asks this question when Paul says, "You will say then unto me, 'Why does He (God) find fault, for who has resisted His rule?'" Can a person be a free responsible agent if his actions have been foreordained from eternity past? When we speak of free agency, we mean that a person is not forced to act contrary to his will. That's the first thing to understand. When we speak about free agency and human freedom, we mean that a person is not forced to act contrary to his will.

   From the human side, a person feels that he is the author of his own acts. All of us feel that we are the authors of our own acts--that we're acting according to our own views; to our own convictions; to our own inclinations; and, to the dispositions of our own nature when it comes to the matter of salvation. As a matter of fact, at the point of our salvation, when we believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, we were only conscious of the fact that we were making a choice. We may have even been aware of the fact that there was a certain resistance toward that choice. But in all practical effects, from the human point of view, we seem to be in control of our acts by our own decisions.

   The doctrine of election reveals to us something that we could not know unless God had come and informed us about this. That seeming freedom of our wills is a delusion, and God explains it to us, consequently, in the Word, through this doctrine. The doctrine of election reveals the divine side of our free agency, and that is that God, in eternity past, as we have seen, has chosen some to salvation. The Holy Spirit in time moved upon the will of those whom He had elected, to bring them to the place where they were willing to receive Christ. The Holy Spirit's activity was secret in your heart.

   As I say, you perhaps were even aware of some resistance to the gospel. But suddenly the day came where your will, as far as you were aware, reached out and went positive toward the gospel. Now what you didn't know was taking place was that a secret work of the Spirit of God was taking place within your being to bring you to this place where you were willing to move your will to accept a savior. If the Holy Spirit had not done that, you would never have reached out for Him.

   So free agency does not mean that the will is free. It just seems like it's free to us from our viewpoint. It does not mean that one is able to change his character just by an act of his own will. Man's will is enslaved to sin. Because we are in the slave market of sin, we're helpless to choose for salvation. "There is none righteous," the Word of God says. "There is none that seeks after God. No, not one." Now that's doctrine. And, as I say, whatever else you want to think about the doctrine of election, the Bible says there is no human being who will move toward God and accept salvation in himself. God has to come in and do something before we move in that direction.

   Now that's what election does. When God has appointed you to salvation before time, the Spirit of God moves in and he begins working secretly upon your will, and He brings that will around to the point where you say, "Yes" to the gospel, but as far as you're concerned, you are running the show and making the decision all along the line. But because of the Word, we know how this works. The meaning of free agency is that from the human side it seems like we are making these decisions. But from the divine side, God is moving upon our wills to move them in His direction.

2. Foreknowledge

   There is a second factor here concerning the reported inconsistency with human freedom and responsibility, and that's free agency and foreknowledge. Some people find no problem with election and human freewill in the sense that God had foreknowledge of who would exercise His will to believe. This is a favorite way out. They see no problem with human freewill and the foreknowledge of God. They say, "Yes, that only means that God, because He is omniscient, looked down the road, down the corridors of time, and He saw who was going to believe, and so He knew who would be elect." What you're really doing is changing the concept of foreordination, which means to mark one out for salvation to the image of Christ. You're mixing this concept foreordination with the concept of foreknowledge, in the sense of knowing beforehand.

   If an action is foreknown by God, if God knows something is going to take place, it is just as certain as if He had foreordained it. It doesn't matter because you say, "God knows what's coming." It's just as certain. If He knows it, it's going to happen. The question is, "When did He come to that knowledge?" And if you say, "Oh it's just God's knowing ahead of time," you are suggesting that there was a time when this information came to God. There was a time when He didn't know who was going to accept. And then at a certain point, maybe all at once (you will say), it became clear to God who would accept. He looked down and then He saw.

   Now do you see what you're suggesting? You're suggesting by that line of thought that there was a time when God did not know something, in which case he could not have been omniscient at that point. And if He ever was not omniscient, He was not God, because he must always be omniscient. So if you say that it's just foreknowledge, and then God saw who was going to be saved, you're suggesting that there was a time when He didn't know, and then he came to this knowledge. If God foreknows something, it's because He foreordained it. It is because God determined it was going to go that way, and that's why He knows it's going to go that way. It's not because He looks and discovers. Nothing could be changed by trying to mix these two. Foreknowledge demands ordination. God knows because He determined it. So while man is a free agent, God is involved in the decision.

   Now if we say that God knew, and that was all, it doesn't change the picture. The question of how God knows who will believe can only be answered by foreordination. That's how He knows.

3. Certainty

   Another factor here is that free agency is consistent with certainty. The question is, "Can a person be free and a thing be certain?" Because you are free you will go through this week, and there will be any number of things that we will not be sure that you will do. Is free agency consistent with certainty? You people will go through this week and we will not know for certain what most of you will do. Your mother will tell you to do something. Will she be certain that you will do it? Because you have freedom of choice, you might do it and you might not do it. You might get around to it, or you might not get around to it. She won't know when you will do it and when you won't do it. But free agency is consistent with certainty. We think that it is not because, again, this is part of our old sin nature reasoning this way. Freedom is equated with uncertainty in our experience. So we think that God cannot say that something is sure, like our salvation, our election, and yet that we can be free agents.

   Now freedom of action can exist at the same time as certainty. In Acts 2:23, we have an example of that, where Luke writes, "Him being delivered by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God (that is, Jesus Christ), you (the Jews) have taken and by wicked hand have crucified and slain." Now here is what he is saying: The determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God, that is the certainty of the deed. This expresses the certainty of the deed. It was the determinate counsel and the foreknowledge of God. However, notice that it also says, "You have taken and by wicked hands," which is somebody making the decision. This is somebody reaching out and taking the life of Jesus Christ, so you had human freedom. So here you have something the God had decided that His Son would die for our sins. Yet, in the process, here you have people making a decision to take His life.

   Freedom and certainty can indeed go together. They're true at the same time. We have many illustrations of that which are common in life. Supposing you were are out visiting Mesa Verde, like our senior college people are going to be doing this summer, where they had those magnificent cities built in the caves that you can hardly believe it even while you're standing there looking at it. But you walk right up to a precipice, and it drops off hundreds of feet down over the side of those cliffs. Now supposing you have a little child in the camp ground, and there are these signs that say, "Warning! Warning! Precipice! Edge of cliff! Watch children!" And they're all over.

   Now supposing you had a little toddler, and all of a sudden you see him running toward the edge of the cliff. Can you say with certainty what that parent would do? That parent has certain freedoms, doesn't he? That parent can say, "Okay, just go ahead and fall over that cliff. You won't do that again." He could be the kind of a parent that says, "I believe in kids learning by experience." We have some parents who are idiots like that, and once in a while they tell me that they like their kids to learn by experience. You know beyond a shadow of a doubt what that parent is going to do. If that parent sees that toddler heading for the edge of the cliff, you know with a certainty that that parent is going to tear out with all that's in him, and he's going to grab that kid before he gets to the edge of that cliff.

   Take an instructor who's teaching a student to fly an airplane. One of the things that an instructor has to explain to the student is how to recover from a stall. So he takes them up to about 3,500 or 4,000 feet, and he shows them how to do power-on and power-off stalls, which is gradually bringing the nose of the aircraft up until it's climbing in such a steep angle that the airplane can no longer climb at that angle, and gradually loses speed, and all of a sudden it reaches a point when the nose of the aircraft just slams forward. At that point, the student is taught what to do in order to recover flying speed, a shallow dive and taking out, and come to where the aircraft is again in the straight and level attitude and under control. Now, if at the high point of the stall, just before the nose is ready to fall, that student inadvertently kicks the rudder (say that he kicks the left rudder), that airplane will fall, but it will also fall on the left wing, and it will enter a left tail spin. It will start corkscrewing toward the ground.

   They're sitting at 3,500 feet. The student has been careless in controlling the attitude of the aircraft as it broke through the stall, and he has dropped it off on one wing, and he has fallen into a spin. Now the instructor is sitting back there with his arms folded and smiling. Can you say with any certainty what the instructor will do? Bail out? No, he probably will not do that because they will take his license away if he does. You're supposed to take care of your students. However, the student doesn't know how to pull out of this spin. If you've ever been in a tailspin, it is a rather frightening experience, and you have to be taught how to do this.

   I remember finally after Mr. Howard taught me how to do this, I got up my courage once to go out by myself, and I did three of them in a row, and that's all. I've never done any since. It is frightening to look down and see that earth spinning around in front of you, and you're chewing up altitude, hundreds of feet rapidly. What is that instructor going to do? Well, he is free. He is a free agent, and he can say to the student, "Pull it out." The student will then proceed to do all the wrong things. The first thing he will do is that he will pull the stick back, which is the worst thing you can do because it only tightens the stall. But that's the natural thing to do. Still he has no idea how to stop the spinning, and it will only corkscrew in worse. The instructor can say, "Well just think it through. Think it through now." Here hundreds of feet are flying by, and they're whizzing in and the thing is whining. You're just a rock. That's all you are. You are just a rock that's falling at that point. And here he is, explaining to the student, "Figure it out now. Put all of your dynamic training together."

   Can you tell for a certainty what the instructor will do? Yes, you can. He will look at the student and tap on his head if he's sitting up, and say, "I've got it." And he will push the stick forward, just the opposite of what you would feel you should do. He'll kick the right rudder to stop the spin. Then he'll gradually immediately start pulling back on the sticks so as not to build up too many Gs on the wings and tear them off, and he will pull it back into a flying attitude. You know for a certainty that an instructor in that position is going to do that. He is not going to spin in. Yet the instructor was perfectly free all the while he was making the decisions as to what to do in that situation.

   So freedom and certainty of action are compatible. God is the only free agent in the universe. Only God can do according to His good pleasure. He's absolutely free. Yet even God is limited by his essence. He cannot do that which is contrary to His nature. Therefore, can you and I say with a certainty that God, who is the only absolute free agent in the universe, we know for a certainty that He will always do right. Yes. That is a certainty because He cannot do contrary to His nature.

4. Divine Limitation

   The next point concerns free agency and divine limitation: Man may reason, and man may decide that there are some things that he can decide to do and some things he cannot do. You might go to downtown Dallas and get on the top of a skyscraper and go out there on the roof and look over the city and crawl over the fence and jump off. You might jump off the building and then, as you pass the 21st floor, decide that you want to go back up. There are certain things you may decide and reason but that you cannot do. So man is a free agent, but he obviously has limitations. He not only cannot will himself back up onto the top of the skyscraper, but he cannot even will himself to a soft landing at the bottom. So while a man is a free agent, he does not really have ultimate freewill. He cannot determine many things about himself, as you did not determine the family you were to be born in; your race; your characteristics; your IQ; the color of your eyes; the shape of your nose; the size your head; or, many other things that might interest you at this point. Man's freedom of will is restricted by divine laws.

5. Divine Persuasion

   Another factor concerning human freedom and responsibility concerns free agency and divine persuasion. Is it possible to be a free agent, and yet have God persuading us to line up with His action which we must follow? Divine persuasion means that God so directs one's inward disposition and his external environment that a person freely follows the divine will. Now, Christians are glad to be saved, but they're not under the sense of having been compelled to be saved. They wanted it. They chose it. Yet they were in effect guided to it by the persuasion of God the Spirit, and there was no other choice they could make.

   Jesus says in John 6:44 that His Father must draw believers to Him. Paul says in Philippians 2:13, "God works in you." Thus, God in election causes the unbeliever's will to go positive to the gospel and to receive Christ as Savior. How does He do this? That's the question. How does God take me as a free agent and persuade my will? Well, the Word of God does not tell us how He does this. However, when we decide for salvation, we do it under this free agency position that we hold, and yet as a result of the persuasion of the Spirit of God which we cannot resist. The ultimate issue is what the Bible teaches about all this. The Bible teaches that we are foreordained to a divine plan in the Cross which has worked in perfect harmony with the voluntary sacrifice of Jesus Christ.

   There was a divine plan. Jesus Christ had voluntary choice, and the divine plan works in perfect harmony with His choice. In Luke 22:21-22, we're told that Jesus Christ was betrayed to the cross. Why? Because it had been divinely determined. Luke 22:21: "But, behold, the hand of him that betrayed Me is with Me on the table, and truly the Son of Man goes as it was determined that woe unto that man by whom He is betrayed." Why did Jesus go to the cross? Because this was in the determinate counsel of God. It was foreordained. Yet, the Lord says, "Woe to Judas," who is the agent who brings this about. It is Judas's responsibility for having exercised his free agency in bringing Christ to the cross. So here we have human responsibility with divine sovereignty, and Jesus Christ acquiescing to the whole thing.

   We have another example in Acts 20:7, where we have the story of Paul in the storm. In Acts 20:24-31, we have an incident which seems to suggest that it is possible for something to be certain, and yet contingent at some particular point. Paul is in a storm, and he tells the captain that he has received assurance from God that everybody on board the ship would survive the storm, and no hands would be lost (Acts 20:21-26). Then some of the sailors go over the side in a boat purportedly to attach anchors in order to stabilize the vessel because they were moving into increasingly shallower waters. But Paul knew that these sailors were going over the side of the small boat in order to row away from the ship in order to try to escape to the land.

   Paul went to the captain, and in Acts 20:31, he warned the captain, mind you, about something that God has said is a certainty. Nobody on this ship is going to drown. All will survive this storm. But Acts 20:31 says, "Paul said unto the Centurion and to the soldiers, 'Except that you abide in the ship, you cannot be saved.'" Now, how could Paul say that? Previously in the context, the Lord tells him, in Acts 20:22, "And now I exhort you to be of good cheer, for there shall be no loss of any man's life among you, but only of the ship." Paul knew that the ship was going to be lost. Its contents would be lost, but nobody would lose his life. All would survive.

   Yet Paul goes up to the officer in charge of the military contingent aboard ship and says. "These sailors are trying to go over the side. If that happens, nobody will survive on the ship." Everybody stays. And you have this condition of seeming something that is absolutely certain can only be saved by someone acting at a certain point. Now how could it be absolutely certain, and yet contingent upon somebody's action? Because God was moving upon the wills of those sailors, and upon the will of the officer in charge who turned and gave the order for them to get back on board ship, and forbad anybody to depart. Why did the officer in charge do that? Because God moved upon his will to bring about that which God had said as a certainty.

   Now there's no use for you to resist this. There's no use for you to fight this. The thing to do is to learn what the Bible teaches on this subject. You will find in time that it is a great relief to know that God is moving among us in such definitive certainty. The Bible says that our election is foreordained by God's sovereign choice, but at the same time, we must freely decide to respond in faith due to God's persuasion upon our wills so that we do respond. The elect will come to heaven as the sailors eventually came safely to the shore. However, no one shall see heaven who does not believe in Jesus Christ. None of the sailors would have been saved had they not believed Paul's warning. Free agency and responsibility along with election are Bible doctrines, and they do go together.

6. Ethics

   Unlimited free agency is unethical. People think that there is nothing so great like absolute freedom. This is the greatest good, to be absolutely free. The word for this is anarchism in our day. A lot of college students are deluded that the greatest thing in life would be to be absolutely free, that you could do anything that you wanted to do, if there were no laws and there were no restrictions. Well, a completely free person, because he has an old sin nature, would be unrestrained. There would be no moral restraint and guidance upon such a being. Nothing would affect this person--praise or blame. If you were to blame him for something he did, he would evade the blame by saying, "Well I changed my mind, and I make a different choice," if he were absolutely free. Full freedom is not necessarily a blessing to mankind. However, free agency, as the Bible speaks about it, under the direction of the Spirit of God, is a great blessing. Free agency under the persuasion of God is a very great blessing. But you can imagine what this world would be like if everybody had absolute freedom with his old sin nature to run rampant.

7. Human Responsibility

   There is one more point here under this first main subject. Election, we are told, is not consistent with human responsibility. Well, the first thing to remember is that election does not relieve a person of his responsibility for sin. Men are under divine condemnation. Why? Because of their sin. That's why a person goes to hell--because of his sin. The fact of election does not prevent anyone from getting to heaven. It's his sin that's preventing him from getting to heaven. The Bible says that all are lost and are under the judgment of God (Romans 5:12). Furthermore, all are responsible for this state that they find themselves in under divine judgment. Now because all are guilty, because all deserve the lake of fire as a result of their own sin, is God unjust because out of that mass of condemned humanity, He chooses and He elects some to eternal life? This does not relieve the non-elect for the responsibility for their state.

   For example, a person, may decide he is going to evade the military draft. So he goes out and he gets himself an ax and he chops off his left hand. Now he's unfit for military duty. Why is he rejected by the military service? Because of his own act of self-mutilation. But supposing later he decides that the military service is heaven, and he wants in. So he applies for the military service, and they reject him because of his physical handicap. Whose fault is that rejection by the military service? The military authorities, or his own? Obviously his own.

   Now supposing there were several men who had their left hands missing, and the military authorities decided that a certain number of men who had a left hand missing handicap were to be sworn into the service for reasons of the good of the service. Would the military service be unjust to the man who had self-mutilated himself in rejecting him because they accepted others with his handicap? No, the military would not be unjust at all. They would be acting according to their sovereign choice and purpose. Certain people fit the sovereign choice and purpose of those authorities, and they had the right to say, "You are to be sworn into the service." To this man, they had the right to say, "You, we reject from the service." This is what God does. Nobody has a claim to go to heaven. Because God elects some, this does not mean that He is being unjust. It is not inconsistent with human responsibility. People are not kept out of heaven because of the doctrine of election. They are kept out of heaven because of their sin--and that's all.

8. Fatalism

   The next major objection is that election is just fatalism. So let's make a comparison. It is true that fatalism and election are the same in certain respects. That is, that certain things in the future have been determined that they will come to pass. But election is determined by a personal, wise, and good heavenly Father, whereas fatalism is purportedly the result of some blind law of universal causation. There is no providential loving God behind fatalism as there is behind election, so they're not the same. Election says that events are accomplished by means directed from the Father. Fatalism says that events are the result irrespective of freedom, like some great machine out of control that just runs over everything.

   However, election is not some great machine out of control. It is a directive, controlled, decision-making system on the part of God. So it's not the same as fatalism. Election says that events lead to the best end of the individual and the glory of God. Those who are elect come to the greatest blessing and to the greatest expression of the glory of God. Fatalism says that there is no end or purpose at all in the results of fatalism. The two are not the same. So here are the results. Election is a God who knows best who is moving in the affairs of men whom He has selected. The fact of certainty exists, and that's not a curse. Fatalism is a curse. The fact of certainty exists, and that is a blessing.

9. Sincerity

   The next major objection is that election prevents a sincere offer of salvation to the non-elect. Obviously, you and I do not know who the elect are. Only God knows--not you and I as His ambassadors. We look at a group of people. We do not know who among them is elect and who is not. We meet an individual, and we are called to witness to this individual. We do not know whether this person is elect or non-elect. Only God knows that. We know it when he believes. Then we see that he is elect, but not for sure. The only time we really know he is elect is when? When we walk into heaven and see him there. Many a person makes a false profession. He goes through the motions. We don't know who the elect are. We know for certain when we see them in heaven. We don't even know where the elect are. We don't know where to look for them.

   Right now there are many elect unsaved people in this world. However, God's salvation that He has provided is sufficient for all. It is perfectly suited to the need of every sinner, and it is sincerely offered to all. The non-elect may come because they have a ground for salvation. But they will not come. As far as a ground for salvation, the non-elect may come. God has covered their sins. But only the elect will come. Election of God is no barrier to salvation.

   Nobody can ever say, "I want to be saved, but I can't. I would like to come to Christ but I can't." If anybody ever says that to you, you may reply to him, "That is not true. The reason you don't come to Christ is because you won't, and the reason you won't is because of your sin." And it would not be out of line, as we shall in a future session, for you to even explain one step further. "The reason your sin will not allow you to come is because God the Holy Spirit has not persuaded your will to come." You will discover that the Lord Jesus Christ did explain the doctrine of election to unbelievers. Sometimes we're told we shouldn't tell non-Christians this doctrine because they will rebel against it. Of course they will, because their old sin natures are darkened and deluded, and they look at it from a human viewpoint. But nobody can say, "I want to be saved but I can't." You don't come because you won't. The decree of election is secret to you and me.

   So we offer a bonafide salvation to everybody. We offer a bonafide offer of opportunity of eternal life to everybody, and that's what you should do. God does this too. Yet God has done this, when He knew full well that the offer He was making would be rejected. In Exodus 3:18, in dealing with Pharaoh, we read, "And the elders of Israel will listen to you. Then you and the elders of Israel are to go to the king of Egypt and say to Him, 'The Lord God of the Hebrews has met with us. Let us take a three-day journey into the wilderness to offer sacrifices to the Lord our God.'" Then Exodus 3:19 says, "But I know." This is God talking, who has just told Moses to go to Pharaoh and say, "Let us go into the wilderness to worship our God. Let us go out into the desert, beyond the borders of Egypt, to worship our God." Now the God who has just told Moses to convey that message, in verse 19, says, "I know that the king of Egypt will not let you go unless a mighty hand compels him." Why is that? Because God looked down and saw what Pharaoh was going to do? No, because God had not ordained to move upon the will of Pharaoh to make him willing to let them go.

Yet, as we have seen, a thing can be certain and yet there can be the agency of freedom of will. A thing can be elected, and yet the individual is responsible, for his loss of eternal life is not because of election, but because of his own sin that brought him to that condition in the first place. God is not unjust. He is nothing but loving and merciful and gracious to look down on a mass of seething, revolting, disgusting, sinful, unsaved humanity, and to scoop out of that sewer those of us that sit here right now who are born again, and throughout the world those who are born again. That was an act of grace, and God is not unjust in the fact that he did not scoop everyone out. He is sovereign, and He may do as per His essence and nature. He will not do what is unrighteous or what is wrong. If you remember the essence of God, your old sin nature won't be throwing up to you that God is unfair. You know by the very essence of God that He cannot be unfair.

Dr. John E. Danish, 1973

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